Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else.
Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?”
“Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”
Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.”
He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
I recently finished reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, and there were quite a few moments where the book hit me hard. One such moment was on the meaning of suffering quoted above.
Of course, the book later notes that suffering is not necessary for finding meaning. Meaning is possible even despite suffering, provided that the suffering is unavoidable. If avoidable, we should remove the cause of suffering since unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic.
What's impressive is how the book shifts the perspective of suffering and reframes it in a way that gives meaning. While the situation remains the same, the way we interpret and respond to it can completely change how it impacts our lives. By finding and giving our suffering meaning, we gain the strength to transcend the pain and carry on with our lives. Such is the power of the human spirit.
Deciding what to do for a living is probably one of the more difficult questions we ask ourselves growing up.
How are we supposed to decide at a relatively young age what skills to learn and what profession to go into? Especially considering how little we know about the world and how much the world changes with each passing year.
It's not like we don't know what we want in life. It's just hard to put in concrete terms, especially considering all the uncertainty out there. But to put it simply, most people want the same few things, and it usually revolves around living a happy and healthy life, earning a decent living doing what we enjoy, and being surrounded by people we love and cherish.
Unfortunately, having only those vague concepts doesn't help us much. For how many years would we enjoy being a dentist and looking at teeth all day? Are we okay working as an engineering specialist in remote locations looking after complicated machinery? How do we continue working as digital artists in this new age of generative AI?
The good news is if we don't know where we want to go, it doesn't matter which path we take. We just need to get somewhere (i.e., our vague concepts), right? Choose a path, walk long enough, and we'll surely get somewhere. For one thing, it's better than staying still and not getting anywhere.
Recently, I've started having panic attacks over something irrational. They usually don't last long, but the problem is they keep coming back every few hours, no matter how hard I talked myself out of it. It's funny how easily emotions can override rational thinking.
One particular panic attack left me feeling extremely helpless, and it was then I remembered the quote: "If you're feeling helpless, help someone." Somehow, the mere thought that I could help others was very relieving, and like magic, it calmed my nerves and soothed my emotions.
I remember discovering that quote, not in written form, but from a song somewhere, and after some digging, it was actually from a TED talk song in 2011.
Listening to it again today, it hits very differently from back then, especially in the context of what happened since the 2020 pandemic and the recent wars and conflicts.
Did you do your best today? I suspect most people would answer yes without much thought or come up with some reason or circumstance that limits the best they can currently do. I don't think many people would willingly answer 'no' to that question. If you were being honest with yourself, what would you answer?
A few years ago, I came across the following quote and it hit me hard.
I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss.
Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time—current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery—and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen.
[...]
Finally he asked me a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, "How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?"
[...]
I swelled my chest with pride and answered, "Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!" I sat back to wait for the congratulations—which never came. Instead the question: "Did you do your best?"
I started to say, "Yes, sir," but I remembered who this was, and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”
He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked one final question, which I have never been able to forget—or to answer. He said, “Why not?” I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room.
From the book, Why Not the Best? by Jimmy Carter
Did I do my best? No, only occasionally.
Why not?
To this day, I still did NOT do my best most of the time. If you tell me I can press a button and instantly be the best version of myself, I would push it. I suspect most people would as well.
But if you tell me such a button actually exists, except it involves some 13 odd steps before the (mostly placebo) button can be revealed, steps such as "building a productivity system," "cultivating self-discipline and mental resilience," "goal planning and habit tracking," etc. Most people would probably give up and not bother. It's ironic because isn't that what it means to be your best self? Someone who can get stuff done, is disciplined and resilient, has goals to strive towards, etc?
So let me say 'yes' and go through those steps. Step one happens to be very simple, and it starts with awareness.
At the end of every day, ask yourself. Did you do your best today?
If yes, mark it on your calendar.
If not, why not? What made you unable to do your best? Write it down, learn from it, and try again tomorrow.
Imagine you're a soldier on a battlefield, and there's chaos everywhere. You constantly see gunfire, grenades, and troops ducking for cover. You're hiding behind a wall and afraid of moving to your next position. For all you know, you might get killed if you're unlucky. The whole place is a mess, and the uncertainty is killing you.
Imagine you're a commander, safely tucked away in HQ and miles from the battlefield. You see everything happening, your troops on the north are losing ground while the ones on the northwest are steadily advancing, so you change tactics and prepare a flank from the west side.
Imagine you're a prime minister, safe in the capital and nowhere near the battlefield. You see the big picture and the impact of the war, so you ask allying nations for help or find ways to alleviate the supply chain issues. You could also negotiate and try to stop the war peacefully, maybe with a strategic trade of some territories and a peace treaty.
Now imagine you're a historian, you've read about countless wars, and this is just another war to you. One side wins, the other side loses, life goes on. Perhaps you can imagine a different world where the loser won, and history is forever changed. Maybe it's worse, and you're glad it didn't happen. Or perhaps you lament over the missed opportunities.
Now imagine you're an intergalactic alien studying lifeforms in general. You see conflict as the bread and butter of life. Every species fight for its survival. There's the classic predator-prey relationship, usually among different species. And then, there's the my-tribe-vs-your-tribe relationship among the same or similar species. Ultimately, it's the same story everywhere you go. Some live while others die.
Here's the analogy. Is your life messy like a soldier on the battlefield? If so, take a step back and look at things through the eyes of a commander, and make tactical plans for yourself. Sometimes, you can step back further and think like a prime minister. What strategic plans can you make to achieve the outcome you want?
Occasionally, be a historian, look back at all the things that have happened, and study them. And realize, like the alien, that everything is but a part of life, and the story is almost always the same in the grand scheme of things.
An hour is short, like really short. It can fly by in the blink of an eye without realizing it. Before you know it, your day is gone. How many hours was that?
I don't mean in the sense of pulling out your phone, and the next thing you know, three hours have gone by. Nor do I mean it in the sense that you're swamped with meetings, and the workday is gone before you had the chance to do anything. Those happen too, but the issue is deeper than that.
Even if there are no external distractions and you're paying full attention to the present moment, an hour still feels short, like when you're engrossed in a game or in deep focus trying to write a blog post. But that's not it either.
What about when you're in pain? Surely an hour feels long when you're suffering? You could be in crutches or doing rehab after surgery, and it certainly feels like time is moving slowly, but that's only in the short term. After spending a few thousand hours, it would become a daily routine, and you'd get used to it. An hour would pass just as fast again.
Why do we think an hour is long anyway? Because it's long relative to a second or a minute? Or is it because it used to feel longer when we were younger? Since there are only 24 hours a day, does that mean a day is also short? Yeah, it certainly feels that way to me. That's why it's so precious.
This is what happens when you stop spending time with intent and let distractions rule your life. You become consumed by the constant search for more, the desire to pull down and refresh the feed, and the incessant lure of that small glowing rectangular screen on your hand. It's all so suffocating.
Your mind feels like it's getting clogged, your thoughts slow down, and your brain feels incredibly hazy. Sometimes, you surprise yourself with how much you've forgotten. What did you do this morning again? Perhaps you should seriously consider getting therapy? Or, at the very least, throw that damn thing away!
It's as if someone is out to get you. Every little thing seems over-engineered for addiction. You struggle to concentrate to the point where you can't even read your search results, wishing for the screen to show a short 30-second summary video with fast camera cuts and condensed speech with no pauses. What in the world happened to you?
Four days, that's all it took. It was supposed to be a simple two-day break, and this is how you end up? All crippled and broken? Is it the fault of the technology? Or is it your fault for not having self-control?
The good news is that recovery was just as fast. All you had to do was stop. Perhaps it's because your brain was only temporarily rewired that it was easy to undo. Maybe the act of going offline and journaling like crazy also helped.
Deep down, you already know this. You know full well what you're getting yourself into. You also know how to get yourself out of it. It's just a matter of having enough self-awareness to act on it.
A few years ago, around when Covid was happening, I discovered The First Take. It's a YouTube channel where various musicians perform in a single take with no do-overs, and it quickly became my go-to place for discovering good Japanese music.
And it wasn't long until I discovered Yuuri and his iconic song, Dry Flower, which was an instant hit. I had always assumed he was a famous and well-established artist. What I didn't know was that, just a year ago, he was a no-name street musician.
How did that happen? Well, let's say he had a lucky break during his street musician days, and he was able to take full advantage of it. While performing a cover of a popular song on the streets one night, the actual main vocalist of the song, Hiro, joined in and sang with him, and the internet went crazy over it!
After that incident, they became good friends and the band spontaneously called him out to sing the same song together on stage in one of their concerts! There's also a short commentary from Hiro around the 2:15 to 3:15 minute mark about pursuing your dreams, which kind of foreshadows Yuuri's future success.
Yuuri even uploaded a video on his channel talking about the whole experience, you can see him getting called out to stage around the 0:24 to 0:36 minute mark, and also what happened afterward as he starts writing his first single.
From there, the rest is history. His songs were a huge hit, and eventually, he became one of Japan's top solo artists.
[Yuuri] began his singing career as a vocalist for the four-man rock band, The Bugzy, until they disbanded in May 2019. After the group's disbandment, he began performing live on the streets of Tokyo.
On October 10, 2019, Yuuri was singing [「花 」-0714-] by My First Story on the street at the scrambled intersection in Shibuya. It became a hot topic when My First Story vocalist Hiro, jumped in and sang the second verse of the song with him.
After this incident, Yuuri was called out from the crowd to perform spontaneously for the encore final performance on November 30 when My First Story was holding a concert in Saitama Super Arena as a part of their country-wide tour "My First Story Tour 2019."
Yuuri's originally composed "Kakurenbo" whose recording was supervised by Hiro and My First Story's [「花」 -0714-] were performed together. On December 1 [2019], Yuuri released "Kakurenbo" independently. It ranked in 4th place on the general chart on iTunes Japan, and the music video garnered over 40 million views.
[...]
On October 25 [2020], his second major single, "Dry Flower" was released. On February 1, 2021 "Dry Flower" exceeded over 100 million streams on the Streaming Songs chart on Billboard Japan.
[...]
On March 22, 2021, "Kakurenbo" also exceeded over 100 million streams on Billboard Japan’s Streaming Songs chart. It is the first time in Billboard Japan history for an artist to have two songs exceed 100 million streams only 8 months after their major debut.
On September 1, 2021, "Dry Flower" exceeded 400 million streams on Billboard Japan’s Streaming Songs chart. Since it exceeded 400 million streams within 44 weeks of charting, Yuuri became the first and fastest solo male artist to achieve this record.
[...]
He also became the first Japanese artist and solo male artist to exceed 500 million streams on December 22, 2021.
Sometimes, fateful encounters like these can overplay the importance of lucky breaks. What most people miss is that while opportunities like these can make or break your life, you would still need to be skilled enough to capitalize on them. If Yuuri didn't have the talent, he probably wouldn't have gotten this far, even with all the help he received.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. While we don't have much control over the latter, we have total control over the former.
A lot of people struggle with imposter syndrome. It's the psychological phenomenon where you doubt your skills or accomplishments, and it constantly feels like you don't belong, that you're just faking it, and it's only a matter of time before someone finds out and arrests you for being the fraud you think you are!
Perhaps you, too, struggle with imposter syndrome and find this very relatable. But here's the thing, have you ever seen an imposter getting caught? Probably not, but with so many people feeling like imposters, how is it that no one has ever gotten caught before?
Instead of trying to beat imposter syndrome, why not aim to be the best imposter you ever can be? You know the old saying. If you can't beat them, join them.
You know you're an imposter, so you put in the hours to study hard and improve your skills. You spend days learning to act more in tune with your role, and you've gotten so good that no one can tell you (the imposter) apart from the real thing!
There's a near-infinite upside and almost zero downsides! You don't have to worry about getting caught because if anyone's getting caught, you know it won't be you. It'll be all the other imposters who didn't work as hard. Besides, society doesn't seem to care anyway.
Today, I joined a zoom call filled with random strangers. I didn't intend to join, I just happen to find out about it right as the call was starting. So I thought this must be a sign and just joined the call. Twice.
The first time, I chickened out. There was just me and another guy, his video was on while mine was not, and there was only awkward silence. So I left.
I rejoined a few minutes later, and now, there are about a dozen people on the call, all with their video on so I turned mine on as well. They're all talking about something, and I have no context on what they're talking about. They're probably wondering who I am and why I'm here, but it didn't seem to bother them. It's just a social get-together, after all. I listened in for a bit but ultimately decided to leave shortly afterward.
So what did I learn from all this? I'm unnecessarily fearful. It was a random zoom call on the internet with random strangers, there's nothing to lose and everything to gain, yet I didn't take advantage of it.
I could have made small talk and introduced myself when it was just me and the other guy. Best case, I made a new friend. Worst case, a random stranger on the internet tells me to go away.
And when there were about a dozen people, I could've looked for a natural break in their conversation and interject with a comment or a question. Best case, I join the conversation, learn something new, and make new friends. Worst case, they ask me to leave.
There's a near-infinite upside and almost zero downsides! Anyway, I'll try that the next time I join a zoom call with random strangers. Hopefully, it'll yield a better result than today.